In the Spanish ibex Spain possesses not only a species peculiar to the Peninsula, but a game-animal of the first rank. Fortunate it is that this sentence can be written in the present tense instead of (as but a few years ago appeared probable) in the past. Since we first wrote on this subject in 1893 the Spanish ibex has passed through a crisis that came perilously near extirpation. Up to the date named, and for several years later, none of the great landowners of Spain, within whose titles were included the vast sierras and mountain-ranges that form its home, had cherished either pride or interest in the Spanish wild-goat. Some were dimly conscious of its existence on their distant domains: but that was all. Not a scintilla of reproach is here inferred. For these mountain-ranges are so remote and so elevated as often to be almost inaccessible--or accessible only by organised expedition independent of local aid. Their sole human inhabitants are a segregated race of goat-herds, every man of them a born hunter, accustomed from time immemorial to kill whenever opportunity offered--and that regardless of size, sex, or season. That the ibex should have survived such persecution by hardy mountaineers bespeaks their natural cunning. Their survival was due to two causes--first, the antiquated weapons employed, but, more important, the astuteness of the game and the "defence" it enjoyed in the stupendous precipices and snow-fields of those sierras, great areas of which remain inaccessible even to specialised goat-herds, save only for a limited period in summer. But no wild animal, however astute or whatever its "defence," can withstand for ever perpetual, skilled human persecution. During the early years of the present century the Spanish ibex appeared doomed beyond hope. Private efforts over such vast areas were obviously difficult, if not impossible. We rejoice to add that at this eleventh hour a new era of existence has been secured to _Capra hispánica_ at that precise psychological moment when its scant survivors were struggling in their last throes. The change is due to graceful action by the landowners in certain great mountain-ranges; and if our own explorations and our writings on the subject have also tended to assist, none surely will grudge the authors this expression of pride in having helped, however humbly, to preserve not only to Spain, but to the animal-world, one of its handsomest species. This new era took different forms in different places. In certain sierras--those of less boundless area--the owners have undertaken the preservation of the ibex partly from their realising the tangible asset this game-beast adds to the value of barren mountain-land, and partly in view of the legitimate sport that an increase in stock may hereafter afford.